Nuclear War

Letter From a Dead Man, a Soviet film dealing with the aftereffects of a nuclear war, took top honors at the 35th Mannheim International Film Week, West Germany`s oldest film festival. Konstantin Lopushanskiy was honored with 10,000 marks (about $5,000), given in recognition of the most outstanding first film by a director. The jury cited his moving depiction of "one of the most pressing issues of our time." Lopushanskiy`s film, completed before the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, also won the international critic`s prize at the film festival.

An expert on Iraqi studies who has advised Israeli and United States governments on Iraq since the early 1980s shared his knowledge with the local community this past weekend. Amatzia Baram, Ph.D, a professor emeritus in the Department of Middle East History and founder/director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, discussed why Israel and the West Should Look to Iraq in dealing with the Arab Spring in Egypt, Turkey, and Syria and his concerns regarding Iran's nuclear developments at Temple Emanu-El of Palm Beach and at the home of Bal Harbour residents Madeline and Herbert Hillsberg.

THE DECISION of NATO defense ministers to beef up conventional forces marks an important step toward reducing the threat of nuclear war. According to U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the improvements include: upgrading ammunition stockpiles, increasing anti-tank weapons by 40 percent, building aircraft hangers that can withstand attack and increasing the number of combat planes by 22 percent. While a credible nuclear deterrent still must remain an important part of NATO strategy, a conventional build-up will reduce the chances of NATO having to quickly resort to the nuclear alternative.

This bicoastal discussion with a colleague began on Twitter. We are often — to avoid the absolutes — on different sides of most issues. This one exchange over the weekend was no different. We were tweeting along, disagreeing respectfully, when she came up with a question that was difficult to answer in 140 characters. What danger do Cuba and Venezuela represent to the United States? This was not a question of human rights, or of democracy, or even of communism. The question was simple and direct.

CORWIN SPRINGS, Mont. -- On the day when she had predicted the likely outbreak of nuclear war, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a guru who says she speaks for God, was besieged by the concerns of a secular world alarmed at what she has brought to Paradise Valley. A judge in nearby Livingston ordered a halt to construction at the site of a huge underground bomb shelter as cleanup crews worked to remove fuel that had leaked from storage tanks near the headquarters of Prophet`s church. Prophet, likening the shelter to "Noah`s Ark in the earth," said in an interview the elaborate plan for her and her followers to survive a nuclear war would continue despite Monday`s legal setback.

Are children preoccupied with fears of nuclear war? Yes, according to several well-publicized studies. But lately, questions have been raised about some of those studies. Among the best-known studies is that of Dr. John Mack, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and some colleagues, who began surveying youngsters in 1978. Their initial findings were that a large percentage of children were painfully aware of the danger of nuclear war. In 1983 Mack and Dr. Eric Chivian, another psychiatrist, interviewed students in the Soviet Union and reported the level of concern was at least as high as in this country.

Reagan: Hello to you and hello to all of you at Loggers` Run Middle School. And congratulations, Kathy, for being the national winner. I know that Mrs. Neuhart, Mrs. Lampi, your parents and all the students and teachers at Loggers` Run are very proud of your achievement. Being able to communicate your opinions and views, whether through speaking, writing or drawing, is a most important skill. Communication, our ability to talk to each other, is one of the most important things that we can have.

U.S. GOVERNMENT officials have prudently shelved a bizarre and unworkable plan to evacuate entire cities to rural areas in event of nuclear war. Abandonment of the Crisis Relocation Plan came after widespread protests by 120 local and state governments representing 90 million people. The protesters used large doses of common sense to conclude that such large-scale evacuations were unfeasible. Unfortunately, Florida Gov. Bob Graham and the state Cabinet failed to join the protesters and submitted a relocation plan.

How many times have you heard that "nuclear war was closer than we had ever imagined" during the Cuban missile crisis 30 years ago this month? You can hear it one more time at 9 tonight on WPLG-Ch. 10 and WPBF-Ch. 25 when ABC presents The Missiles of October: What the World Didn`t Know, its sacrificial lamb to the start of the World Series. CBS`s baseball coverage starts at 8 on WCIX-Ch. 6 and WPEC-Ch. 12. ---- TOM JICHA

The site is a throwback to a time when a nuclear war with the former Soviet Union seemed so imminent that a president sought refuge in a steel tunnel buried on a man-made island in South Florida. The "JFK bunker" is American history, squeezed between two historic Coast Guard buildings on Peanut Island. Palm Beach County officials had closed the structure for renovations. It reopened this week. The public can again see the bunk beds and ham radio as well as the metal drums that once housed drinking water for a president, family and staff.

When I was a kid, there was a bully in our neighborhood. He punched, pushed and kicked kids smaller and weaker than himself, especially those who refused to respond to his threats. Most kids tried to avoid him, thinking their demonstration of weakness might protect them from being hit. It never did. Having set themselves up as easy targets, the bully went after them first. This lesson has served me well as a citizen of the United States. During the Reagan years, in matters of foreign policy, self-defense was known as "peace through strength."

The Rev. Louis Vitale has lost track of how many times he has been arrested. More than 200, he figures, maybe 300. The Franciscan friar figures he has spent a year and a half behind bars. In court last month, Vitale, 76, explains that he had a higher purpose when he trespassed two years ago at Vandenberg Air Force Base: calling attention to the perils of nuclear war. Vitale tells Magistrate Judge Rita Coyne Federman, who had found him guilty in December, that sending him to jail would only make him more determined to break the law to protest injustice.

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., the Army Air Forces pilot whose bombing run over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 introduced nuclear war, died Thursday at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He was 92. Mr. Tibbets died of heart failure, said Gerry Newhouse, his longtime friend. The pilot never apologized for unleashing the devastating explosive force and insidious nuclear radiation that leveled more than two-thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima and immediately killed at least 80,000 people. To Mr. Tibbets and supporters, dropping the atomic bomb was a justifiable means of shortening World War II, preserving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen that military experts said might have died in a final Allied invasion of Japan.

Leon Goure, a political scientist, Sovietologist and expert on Soviet civil defense, died March 16 of congestive heart failure in Arlington, Va. Mr. Goure, a longtime resident of Potomac, Md., was 84. Mr. Goure focused on civil defense at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were taking civil defense measures, even though the Cold War doctrine of "mutual assured destruction" required that both populations be vulnerable to nuclear annihilation....

The site is a throwback to a time when a nuclear war with the former Soviet Union seemed so imminent that a president sought refuge in a steel tunnel buried on a man-made island in South Florida. The "JFK bunker" is American history, squeezed between two historic Coast Guard buildings on Peanut Island. Palm Beach County officials had closed the structure for renovations. It reopened this week. The public can again see the bunk beds and ham radio as well as the metal drums that once housed drinking water for a president, family and staff.

World War II ended with a bang -- actually two bangs: U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unleashing the most horrific weapon ever produced was so devastating that Japan surrendered unconditionally. Both Albert Einstein, whose theories on splitting the atom, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who proved them correct by developing the first atomic weapons as director of the Manhattan Project, expressed later misgivings as to the consequences of their actions for world peace and human survival.

Kathleen Castro says she worries about the possibility of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. But sometime soon, the fifth-grader at Logger`s Run Community Middle School west of Boca Raton will get the chance to express her desire for peace to someone who might be able to do something about it: President Reagan. Castro, 11, is the winner of a national competition held by Weekly Reader, a publication for school children, that asked students to submit essays and illustrations telling the president what they think his top goal should be during his second term in office.

The federal government`s total stupidity in forcing Florida to waste money and manpower on nuclear war evacuation plans that won`t work has just been conclusively demonstrated by the government itself. A horrifying new report shows that most Floridians, including everyone in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties, would die instantly or within a few days if a Soviet nuclear attack comes, making state evacuation plans meaningless. In simple terms, the report makes clear, there would be almost no safe place to evacuate to. The federal report, Nuclear Attack Planning Base 1990, says suspected nuclear targets in Florida have increased from 18 to 40 since 1975, while the number of Floridians at risk of death has risen from 6.9 million to 8.6 million, about three of every four people in the state.

The nation stopped in its tracks on this day 40 years ago when its charming young president was shot down before our eyes while riding down a street in full public view. It was such an unexpected and profound shock. World War II and the rise and fall of the Soviet empire were the most significant events of the 20th century, but the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, was the single most gripping moment. The death of a single man transformed our perceptions of the world, just as the terrorist attacks on Sept.

"Peace on YOU!" shouts Irv Horowitz, edging dangerously off the curb and into weekend traffic. He shakes his fist at a young man in a Volvo, who is frowning and giving a thumbs down to the crowd carrying signs with such slogans as "No blood for oil." "We want peace, not war!" Horowitz cries. Not bad for a 76-year-old grandfather and snowbird who lives in a Deerfield Beach retirement community. Go to any rally or gathering these days, as the peace movement accelerates to full throttle, and there are plenty of senior citizens waving signs and raising their voices.